The Word: On the Translation of the Bible

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Barton’s own preference is to ­follow the three criteria of ­adequacy, genre and purpose in Reiss and Vermeer’s Towards a General ­Theory of Translational Action (1984), which I have not read. After their number, the translated Torah – and, by extension, the whole Greek Old Testament – is known as the Septuagint. This was the Old Testament of the Greek-speaking Church of the Fathers. Thanks to the Septuagint translation, Christian Bibles contain texts outside the Jewish canon of Scripture, such as the Wisdom of Solomon and the books of the Maccabees. The sufferings of Job take their place in the plotline that links the Hebrew bible and the Christian New Testament: the fraught relationship between humanity and the one God who first appeared to Moses and later, according to Christian belief, gave his only son, Jesus, who was crucified to atone for our sins and then rose from the dead.

The account of the Hebrew Bible, or in Christian terms, the Old Testament, is a tour de force. Barton dates the texts it contains as almost certainly written from the eighth century BCE onwards – well after the times of Moses, Solomon and David and far from being a contemporaneous source of information on the exile of the Israelites in Egypt and their triumphant return to the promised land. The books are, rather, a later distillation of folk memory and foundation myth, constituting an uplifting national literature “for a small nation ... the size of Wales”. Throughout history, most Jewish and Christian believers have understood scripture not in the languages in which it was first written but rather in their own—in translation. In The Word, acclaimed Bible scholar John Barton explores how saints and scholars have negotiated the profound challenges of translating the Bible while remaining faithful to the original. In addition to considering questions of literal versus free translation, literary style, inclusive language, and more, Barton draws out scriptural translation’s role at critical junctures in religious history. Far from a mere academic exercise, biblical translation has shaped how we answer faith’s most enduring questions about the nature of God, the existence of the soul, and the possibility of salvation. This strikingly accessible yet wonderfully erudite volume will be welcomed by many … a tour de force.” – BBC History Magazine

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In our own time, Robert Alter, the American professor of Hebrew and comparative literature, who this century published his own trans­lation of the Hebrew Bible, has excoriated modern versions that turn the Bible into an easy read by suppressing distinctive features of biblical speech (such as repetition and parataxis – the use of “and... and... and”, which actually goes quite well into English).

To me, many phrases in the Bible are memorable precisely for the oddity of their translation. Later in Exodus, God gives Moses ins­tructions for making the priestly garments, specifying: “Thou shalt make pomegranates of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, round about the hem thereof; and bells of gold between them round about: A golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, upon the hem of the robe round about.”The Oxford festival is the most elegant and atmospheric of literary festivals. It’s a pleasure to both attend and perform there. In antiquity there were nevertheless anxieties about the status of Scripture in translation. The Talmud transmits a pious retelling of the story we read in the Letter of Aristeas. Ptolemy has the 72 translators isolated in 72 separate rooms, each translating the Torah independently. “The Holy One, Blessed be He, placed wisdom in the heart of each and every one and they all agreed to one common understanding.” Under divine inspiration, the translators each produce an identical, authoritative Greek text. God uses the words of the Bible as a school of righteousness, of justice, and of love. In this school, the deepest learning we undergo is the shaping of our love: our love for God and our love for all our neighbours (Mark 12.29-31). Our reading shapes our desires, our imaginations, our emotions, our habits, our ideas, our relationships, our institutions, the structures of our society, and our cultures. It shapes all the physical stuff of the lives we live as bodily creatures together in the world. All of life is caught up in the curriculum of this school. Immensely impressive… A HISTORY OF THE BIBLEis a confident, distinctly courteous performance, wary of overstatement and sure of its intellectual footing. No work of literature has a more fascinating life story than the Bible, and Barton has told it with a precision and insight that will make this the definitive account of the century.”– Christian Science Monitor Barton says that while the Bible has been understood as the source of fundamental truths, believers for most of the history of Judaism and for the entirety of Christian history have understood the Bible in translation rather than in the language it was first written. Barton looks at the challenges of producing versions of the Bible in the language of the day whilst remaining true to the original. He says translators have been among the most important people in mediating the Bible’s message and even in shaping it.

The Bible is held to be both universal and specific, the source of fundamental truths inscribed in words that are exact and sacred. For much of Jewish and almost all of Christian history, however, most believers have understood scripture not in the languages in which it was first written but rather in their own - in translation. This book examines how saints, scholars and interpreters from antiquity to the present have negotiated the difficult task of producing usable versions of the Bible in their own language while remaining faithful to the original. It traces the challenges they faced, ranging from minute textual ambiguities to the sweep of style and the stark differences in form and thought between the earliest biblical writings and the latest, and explains the bearing these have on some of the most profound questions of faith: the nature of God, the existence of the soul and possibility of its salvation. The theological gear change necessitated by the new faith in Christ’s divinity, death and resurrection, and the subsequent history of Christian doctrine, is superbly narrated by Barton. From the first, the gospel writers and Christian thinkers sought to give the Hebrew Bible a suitably forward-looking spin, digging out apparent ‘testimonia’ to the coming of Christ in the older text. The Book of Isaiah in particular, with its references to “a son given to us ... a prince of peace” (Isaiah 9:2-7), was pressed into service. It was even repositioned towards the end of the Old Testament in the Christian bible, where its verses could form a bridge to the gospels, in which its “prophecies” would be fulfilled.I came away buzzing and reassured that we still have in this century a wide ranging community fascinated not just by famous authors (I’ve rarely seen so many concentrated in one place) but by challenging ideas and questions. John Barton has written a wise and eminently sane book about a book which has inspired both insanity and wisdom. It is a landmark in the field, and it will do great good.”— Diarmaid MacCulloch